The present invention relates generally to digital imaging devices, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for defining a panning and zooming path across a still image during movie creation in such a device.
The use of digital video cameras and digital still cameras is becoming widespread. Digital video cameras differ from digital still cameras in a number of respects. Digital video cameras capture approximately thirty frames per second and are optimized to capture a large amount of moving images, but sacrifice image quality. That is, digital video cameras typically capture thirty low-resolution 640xc3x97480 images per second. However, the uncompressed digital video signals from all those low resolution images require huge amounts memory storage, and high-ratio real-time compression schemes, such as MPEG, are essential for providing digital video for today""s computers. Unfortunately, the hardware to support such processing is expensive, placing most digital video cameras outside the reach of most consumers.
Still digital cameras offer a less expensive alternative to digital video cameras, but are used primarily for capturing high quality static photographs. Still digital cameras are less expensive because they have far less processing power and memory capacity than digital video cameras. Even with these limitations, some still digital cameras are also capable of capturing sequential images, such as a burst image. A burst image is a series of images captured in rapid succession, such as 3 images per second, for instance.
A typical still digital camera equipped with a LCD screen operates in two modes, capture or record mode for capturing images, and play mode for playing back the captured images on the LCD screen. Unfortunately, even still digital cameras capable of capturing burst images are incapable of displaying the images comprising the burst in play mode as a movie. One reason it is that a burst image usually includes only 3-8 images and therefore does not have a sufficient number of images to display as a movie. And even if there were enough images to play as a movie, the camera would be incapable of displaying the images at the high frame rate required for a movie presentation. This is because the camera would have to retrieve each image from memory, decompress, resize and then display each image. Due to the limited resources of today""s still digital cameras, the display of a burst image resembles more of a slide show than a movie.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and apparatus for interactively creating a movie from one or more still images in a digital camera. The present invention addresses such a need.
The present invention provides a method-and apparatus for enabling a user to define a panning and zooming path across a still image in a digital imaging device during interactive movie creation. The method and apparatus include allowing the user to define the position of a plurality of key frames on the still image, allowing the user to size the key frames to control the zoom during the movie, and allowing the user to set the key frames on the still image to fix each of the key frame""s position and size.
In a first embodiment for enabling a user to define a panning and zooming path, the key frames automatically appear on the image and the user utilizes a four-way controller to position the key frames, and uses and soft keys to resize the key frames accordingly. In a second preferred embodiment, the user manually draws the key frames in their desired location using a combination of the four-way controller and the soft keys. In further embodiments, the present invention also enables the user to define whether the path defined by the key frames is straight or curved; the displacement of the key frames in time, and the play back acceleration of the image frames between the key frames.